


pavise

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Betrayal, Character Study, F/F, Identity Porn, Imperial Jyn Erso, One-Sided Attraction, POV Second Person, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-09 05:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15259995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: You’ve never been very good at gazing back into the abyss that is you.





	pavise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



The pins slip easily from your hair and fall with an elegant clatter into the marble sink before which you stand. White and specked with gold, with silver, smattered as though with stardust from the skies above Aldera City, the sink holds such a shine that you can almost see your reflection in its surface. If you chose to look more closely, you might see more than the vague smudge of your dark hair and darker gown there. Already it is too difficult to look at yourself in the mirror. It is too pristine and honest; the image there is sharp and it intends to cut you. Maybe this imperfect, unclear facsimile would suit you better.

You’ve never been very good at gazing back into the abyss that is you. Much better to avoid your own eyes. And now more than ever, though you’ve practiced for years, ever since you discovered all the things your father does to keep you and your mother safe. As a princess rails and raves outside this bathroom door, it is imperative that you do not weaken yourself further, that you do not make her job easier. Avoid your own eyes at all costs.

How will you withstand her rage if you have already torn yourself to pieces before she could even develop a taste for your blood and misery?

She will never understand that this is as much a punishment for you as it is for her and her people.

She will never understand that you offer her and her people a degree of safety, security. As long as you are here—and it is your job to remain here—Alderaan is safe. If your father’s monstrous creation fires on this system, so close to completion now that you can taste ozone in the back of your throat, it will tear the entire project apart. It might tear the Empire apart. 

A part of you wishes Krennic or Tarkin would finally take it that one step too far. Tarkin, most likely. He is the more suspicious of the two where Alderaan is concerned and Krennic has always wanted to choose the Death Star’s first target, two good reasons for Tarkin to express that contemptible ambition as quickly as possible. But Krennic knows what Tarkin wants; sometimes he is even wise enough to know how to take it away from him. So far, that has kept the Death Star safely elsewhere. It will not keep this place safe forever.

If only you hadn’t stumbled onto the board. Now, it has to be you.

A Rebellion brews and you’ve argued far too often with your father about it to not gain undue attentions. 

You are a fool.

You are an Imperial, too, which sometimes amounts to the same thing. You do not believe in Death Stars and subjugation, but you do believe in cohesion and unity, even if those concepts are academic to you, whimsical notions that you turn over within your mind night after night after night as you weigh the pros of empire against the cons. Republic corruption against Imperial order. Which is better? Which is worth shedding blood for? Which is worth lying and dying and stealing for?

Which is worth yoking the Princess of Alderaan for?

You are an Imperial and you are alone and you want desperately to be neither of those things. Though you know you will die as both, one way or another, you still carry a dying flicker of hope, shielded for years by stubbornness and need and sheer, unattractive habit. It feeds on the children’s tales you carry inside of you. To be worthy, you must sacrifice something. To find happiness and peace, you must embrace that sacrifice. 

This is your sacrifice. 

You know in your gut that Leia is a Rebel. Even if Tarkin and High Command And Emperor kriffing Palpatine do not, you are already certain. One day, she will slip up and the game she is yet too brash and arrogant to realize is being played with and around her will be forfeit. She and everything she cares for will be wiped from the same board you already find yourself ensnared upon. 

You will not save her. This isn’t that kind of story. 

You have been lucky enough to have been played this way, you decide as your palms press against the smooth, unforgiving marble. Sent here to dig yourself a seditious hole to die in, you’re in the one place you might do some good. A trap cannot discriminate between its mark and those it has simply lured in addition to its target.

If Leia never realizes it, well, this isn’t that kind of story either. She is the only one you might hope would realize it, though. Anyone else might spring the trap.

But you don’t need accolades and attention to take that shield of stubbornness and need and habit and grow it into something that might just buy Leia Organa the time she requires to become more than what she is. Conceited, spoiled, utterly out of her depth, she has no idea what she is doing and her parents are scarce better. 

But being married to the perfect Imperial ideal—few know of your flaws and it suits them to keep those flaws secret—will temper her. Believing herself watched, she may learn subtlety. And when her plans, only the least suspicious, the least damning, run afoul of Imperial security, she will teach herself how to better plan her treachery. 

You hope, at least. That is the goal now.

As you open the bathroom door to face your wife for the first time, your hair falls across your shoulders and her eyes find themselves caught in the gentle curls that will hold for another few moments and no more. Her fury is tempered, its incandescence refracting through the layers of ice that will begin, you think, to become her shield. 

Good. She will need it in the war to come.

“Tell me, Princess, how do you like what you see?” you say with a wink, with a smile, with the wish that you could have found one another in a bar instead for she is beautiful and you would show her such care if only she wanted it, wanted you. Without the weight of the galaxy’s fate between you, you think she might have liked you. Without your Imperial manners and your Imperial connections and your Imperial kriffing life, you believe in your heart that you could have gotten along. 

You reach for her because that is what she expects an entitled Imperial brat to do. 

“Don’t touch me,” she says, not yet fearful of you. Perhaps she will never be. Perhaps one day she will figure you out and keep your secret. 

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. 

You cannot live this lie that way, so you shut every perhaps away, lock them in the dark, dank prison cells of your mind where they can harm no one. They will be as safe in there as you are out here. 

“Suit yourself.”

You dress for bed and you wait. 

You are not so very disappointed when Leia does not join you. You had known she wouldn’t.


End file.
